It is of course known for systems and methods to be developed in accordance with a set of rules. It is also known for existing legislation to be analysed using computerised databases built on a set of rules.
Our previous International Patent application PCT/AU02/01380 describes one such system and the description and contents thereof are incorporated herein by reference.
In general terms it may be said that this earlier application describes a rule based computerised method of drafting legislation which includes a set of legislative drafting conventions and an XML schema incorporating those conventions. The process develops a computer system containing a set of declarative rules in accordance with which legislation can be written and uses this system to write legislation where the declarative rules correspond to acceptable legislation, where the declarative rules constrain the drafting to a strict logical structure, and where the agreed drafting conventions are incorporated in an XML schema.
The earlier patent outlines a system that provides further editing support when drafting to facilitate the use of the drafting conventions; that creates a legislative parser to convert the draft legislation to XML to verify conformance with the drafting conventions and report any failures; that creates facilities to import the parsed legislation into a pre-existing rule base technology to create a rule base, and that creates a testing methodology so that the drafter can test the legislation against cases.
A computer system for writing legislation is described in our earlier application which includes a database of the declarative rules and a program for executing those rules, wherein the rules are written in a format corresponding to acceptable legislation using a set of agreed drafting conventions which constrain the logical structure, and wherein the system uses an XML schema incorporating the drafting conventions.